Apple will sell 12.9 million iPads before the end of this year, according to the market watchers at iSuppli, upping their earlier estimate of 7.1 million "magical and revolutionary" devices.
"The iPad is shaping up to be the 'Tickle Me Elmo' of the 2010 holiday season," said iSuppli's Rhoda Alexander in a statement, meaning …

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Are other manu's effin' dense?

This is why they fail. Waiting to see how Apple does before launching something half as good into the market place a year or more late and then wonder why they have lackluster sales in comparison. They already know how Apple steals key market segments (or creates them) with their products. The iPad is nothing new or innovative. It's just a big iTouch ffs! No wonder Job's is laughing all the way to the bank. I honestly believe that the people running some of these other companies need firing and replacing them with monkeys. They'd probably do a much better job!

I wish I was head of some company like HP, Dell, Asus,Samsung or one of the other smartphone makers perhaps. I'd soon kick their design teams into shape.

Re: Are other manu's effin' dense?

Well, yes in fact they are.

Most of them are under the thumb of intel and MS. They take their lead from those two. This is why HP has spent the last few years developing the slate based on promises from intel that the "low power atom" would be great and from MS that "Windows 7 will be much better at touch"

It turns out that neither promises are true and the slate has been dumped, leaving them to finally grow a pair and develop a product in defiance of their legacy <ahem> "partnerships" with their bullying suppliers.

Until PC manufacturers start to think for themselves and say to "hell with you intel/Microsoft" they will continue to fail when competing against the likes of apple.

Waiting to see how Apple does ...

Please note that pads/tablets - mostly using Android - were out in retail MONTHS before Jobs released his.

He should have bought samples as most of these early units have way many features than Apples knock off. These standard features include 32 gig SD support, Android, multiple USB connectors, Flash, 3G, WiFi, GSM, touch, gestures, etc.

Now a HongKong company is producing Android custom chips to support the Chinese pad manufacturers - no materials shortages there!

Finally, a Vietnamese company, GM Software of Ho Chi Minh City, is about to release a pad.

Re: Are other manu's effin' dense?

I'd agree with most o what Goat Jam has to say with one additional point.

Perhaps if Microsoft (and, perhaps, Apple) hadn't spent so much time and effort killing off those other companies that actually did think for themselves, perhaps Apple really wouldn't have such an easy time of it. Mind you, considering that Apple were one of these companies that M$ tried so hard to kill off at one time, I really can't blame Apple 100% for its actions.

A title is required!! Re

"Mind you, considering that Apple were one of these companies that M$ tried so hard to kill off at one time, I really can't blame Apple 100% for its actions."

LOL Fanboi alert. Obvious fanboi is obvious, etc.

No, Microsoft did not try to kill off Apple, in fact, Apple would not exist today if not for Microsoft. The antitrust laws in the United States forced Microsoft to fully fund Apple when Apple went broke for building crap products. It looks like Bill Gates did a good job reconstructing Apple, even though the two barely directly compete anymore.

People don't buy Apple products for the operating system, and the hardware is the same (or worse) than comparable PCs. People buy Apple solely for the brand and 'look' of the case. This means that Apple competes with companies like HP and Dell. Probably their most direct competition is Sony, because both Apple and Sony place a huge markup on their products to rip off naive customers.

You need to learn your history

Apple was not saved by Microsoft. They would not have gone bankrupt without MS' help. That's an old misconception by people who don't understand what really went on.

You also don't understand why people by Apple products. Saying they buy them for the brand and the look of the case is utterly ridiculous. Your ignorance on topics relating to Apple seems to be fueled by your dislike of the company and thus a lack of effort to dig a little deeper to understand the facts.

What?

RE: "hate speechers"?

Hardly suprising on an IT site when a broken product is so hyped, but no worse than Vista's reception here. Industry wide however there is definitely a move towards Apple becoming a new pariah - if MS would just get rid of Balmer we'd enter a completely new era.

I don't hate Apple, they're just exploiting their position and consumer fickelty same as Microsoft and many others have done before. What I hate is the media empowering Apple, doing their marketing gratis and raising the status of a technically illiterate marketing guy to some kind of IT guru. Bill Gates was hardly a bright light, but at least he was a mediocre developer.

I guess Elias et al are probably insipidly rich and don't lose too much sleep, but it must irk a little that iPhone is portrayed as Ives and Jobs' baby despite neither having the slightest clue how it actually works...and with iPhone4 I'm pretty sure both had far too much of a hand (pardon the pun) in why it doesn't .

Used one?

Have you used one?

Where did the reports of problems come from? an Apple support forum. What are user support forums for? they are for people asking questions when they are having problems with something. They aren't full of people saying "I just had to write that my phone is working great".

If you went and sat in a hospital waiting room you would also conclude that the human body is no good as well as they are people there having problems with their health.

Re: What

@gfs

In reality they're people that don't like something about Apple, or an Apple product. The "not liking" can include mild dissatisfaction with features, derisive mocking of flaws, not agreeing with licensing policy or thinking they're on the pricey side, amongst other things.

Real Fans of Apple, though, regard any sort of disapproval of Jobs and His Works as tantamount to heresy, so dive straight in at the emotional deep end and accuse any dissenters of "hatred".

re: "What?"

@Dick Emery:

So what would be the Next Big Product you would create, design and sell in millions and millions of copies to eager customers if you'd be running HP, Dell, Asus, or Samsung? I'm curious, really.

They are all aping Apple because the whole PC industry has ever only been an industry that produced what someone else already sold well. And then tried to make it cheaper and faster and with more megapixels, more buttons and larger screens. While at the same time never ever leave out any feature that has been in the previous model. It's no surprise that the last smartphones creep to 4 and 5" screens, two flash lights on the back and ever more Ghz. Next year we will probably see the first smartphones with cameras on the sides and *two* USB ports. And some buttons on the back, maybe.

new next big product?

If I was in charge of a company like HP, this is what I would be working toward:

Monitor-over-wireless-network technology.

Monitor-over-web technology.

These two functions would eliminate the entire laptop, netbook and tablet market at once. You could carry a screen with you, that would remotely sync back to your desktop, giving you the full processing power of a desktop on a simple screen/input device. There would be no need for much of any processing power, since it would be a display, which would allow it to be much smaller or flexible in design. It would essentially be cloud ready, just using the concept in a more micro way, rather than the macro cloud vision we have now.

They have already solved printing over the web, but the media doesn't fanboi for them.

Put that way

Why yes we do...

And Lie to me Steve! is shaping up to be just as annoying... History is doomed to repeat itself yet again, in just the same way it has every time a larger than life figure has come along and dazzled the great unwashed. soon these devout worshiper will find themselves standing there holding useless junk and feeling familiar burning feeling in the pit of their stomach that follows after realized they've just been conned by their holier than thou cult leader...

I move

that El Reg refers to Jobs as 'Honest Steve' with a mandatory link on the text to a bullshitography of that mendacious megalomaniac.

When people 'copy' Apple products they tend to get carried away and add features they should have been released with like cameras, sd slot, etc... but Apple's genius is the slavish pavlovian response their customers have to every new release, hence why the monkey brained users will ditch their ipad1 for an ipad2 just cos they added the camera they deliberately omitted from #1 cos they knew they would spend again for #2. That, in any universe, is a damned clever revenue stream.

It's also why Honest Steve is probably starting to become bad for the company with his insane ranting, too.

yes

With iScratch there is a cost ...

No freebie OS upgrades with Apple for the scribe devices. These owners will be getting their first chargeable upgrade soon.

On the other hand ANDROID is FREE, in many ways.

Given the massive adoption of Android by CN (China) cell manufacturers, as well as by the slate/pad crew and now by device manufactures, such as refrigerator and other domestic appliance producers, it is unlikely Apple will be the dominant software OS in the worlds biggest market..

Android also lets the CN government continue it's suppression as the Android OS is so malleable that 'offending' features can be omitted. WiFi in CN is practically non-existent in most cities and therefore ir is often omitted on hand-held devices sold in CN.

...is there?

JaitcH, just how do you know that iOS4 will be chargeable for iPad? Given that iOS4 wasn't a chargeable update for the iTouch; I'd be willing to bet you're wrong.

Anyway, in your nice 'free' Android world the problem is not with billable updates; but with the likely lack of any update for your device once the manufacturer has moved onto their next model - leaving your hardware behind. Look at the Android phone world for a multitude of examples...

Re: Android Fridge?

HP?

HP are already in the 'Pad market, I have one of their excellent Touchsmart TM2 convertible laptops. Use it as a normal laptop for work, flip the screen into tablet mode for content consumption (movies etc), pop that into Portrait for reading ebooks (9 hour battery life) or for taking handwritten notes in meetings (yes! it has a digitizer and pen! Yes if you turn the pen over you can erase stuff with the other end! Wooo!)

jim, time to retire

it has a pen, 3 USB slots and external DVD burner?! welcome to 2003 jim...

"the ipad does nothing" - you have actually switched it on haven't you? go and read the apple site and you might be surprised and happy with what it can actually do for today's consumers - those in 2010.

You fail to be the consumer apple wants you to be

It's not for burning things to DVD or for connecting USB devices. It's a simple device, designed to do simple tasks very well indeed. In that area it excels."

REally?..

{mocking voice:}

All those great features you list are not needed because of your failure of understanding.

You fail to understand that Apple is free from viruses, because M$ has more viruses.

You fail to understand no one would want to watch their video on thier most expensive screen when its nearby. You fail as a human because you want to watch the movies and music you have already seen and paid for, rather than just buy it again from his holy Steve.

{End mocking voice}

Oh grow up really, this is why the rest of get so sick of the sanctimonious cult like attitude the fanbois insist on displaying. These are all great features for a mobile device...don't defend the lack of them in the ipad by saying no one wants them, its an invalid argument and doesn't make you look intelligent. A simple device does NOT COST $800.

Further what the hell does it do so well? Turn on? Show photos and connect to the Web? Really I have yet to have one fanboi validly defend that this the Ipad is anything other than a large ipod, Palm pilots and netbooks have been able to do all the things the touch can for YEARS - hell blackberries have had many of these features for years. Even some of the old Pentium Toshiba notebooks were super tiny, light, long batter, and had more ports, and CPU power than this ipad joke, and they were around over a decade ago.

And to other AC: come on what a stupid comment yes DVD's were around in 2003 - does your smartphone or netbook have one? didn't think so - sounds like a pretty desirable feature to me...should phones not have screens since LCD's are so 90's.... ha!